The BBC is to remake the classic children's animation programme The Clangers as a hi-tech production with environmental politics at the fore.
Original Clangers animator Peter Firmin and illustrator Daniel Postgate - the son of Clangers creator Oliver - will be involved in the £5m budget production. The new series will be …

Re: Why can't they write some new programmes?

Agreed, the fact that they were made from odds and ends added to their credibility, their warmth. Unfortunately CGI has the tendancy to remove the cuddly effect and replace it with "clean and perfect".....

Bagpuss et al shared the same idea imperfection and it is was made them so real..

Re: Why can't they write some new programmes?

Re: Why can't they write some new programmes?

You think The Italian Job was bad? Just wait until you get to the final paragraph of the BBC press release, er, news article: "The £5m production is already under way, and is being co-produced by US pre-school TV channel Sprout, which will broadcast the programme in North America."

And since we saw Mum lay and hatch the egg, we can only presume she has been cheating on Pingu's Dad.

GiggleBiz; the name concerns me as it sounds like they are ripping off the good name of an educational software company that make a series of Nursery and Primary school games under the "Gigglebies" name; a bit like starting up a consumer electronics firm called "Appel"

Re: Why can't they write some new programmes?

was there actually anything Italian in it ?

well, the first 15 minutes are in Venice aren't they?

if you watch the whole film, it's because their idea to steal the whole security truck by exploding the road from under it, just like they stole the whole safe by exploding the floors beneath it "in the Italian job" which they did at the start of the film.

all that aside, it is undoubtably an abomination and besmirch upon the memory of the original film and should never have been allowed.

Re: Why can't they write some new programmes?

Re: Why can't they write some new programmes?

"in bloody America, was there actually anything Italian in it ?"

My dear boy you must understand that Americans sometimes claim ethnicity based upon fractional gene participation acquired in the great-great-great ancestry and beyond, and that some elliptical speech was being used.

The full title of the remake is "The Italian/American Job".

Actually, that doesn't work either since the star claims to be Irish (see first paragraph).

As you were.

I don't think there is anyone over the age of 20 who honestly thinks the remake is superior to the original provided:

a) They have *seen* the original - it is a bit rare in these here transatlantic parts

2) They understand the difference between chromakey and doing stuff for real.

Next up: The remake of The Flight of the Phoenix: Flogging offense or Hanging offense?

I preferred the Mash's take

So, the BBC CAN still sink lower

According to a 'retrospective' I saw a few years back, the original Clangers was scripted, and the dialogue (yes, all the whistling and wooOOooo'ing was a written script) had to get approval. No douby they'll lose all that wit & whimsy with some irrelevant heavy-handed electronic whistles, with voiceover propaganda.

environmental politics at the fore; it;s a KIDS programm, ffs. Stop with the lefty brainwashing in primary school, please.

Re: So, the BBC CAN still sink lower

Re: So, the BBC CAN still sink lower

No the wombles was all about the Thatcherite vision of a race of sub-humans genetically engineered (well they only had one female) troglodyte morlocks, never to be seen and clean up after the waste of the consumer society. It was typical facist BBC propaganda of the ultimate tory contempt of the working class.

Re: So, the BBC CAN still sink lower

> As I remember the myth/truth, it was "The bloody thing's stuck again" when a door failed to open,

> and it was cut from the original broadcast despite being whistled...

Possibly apocryphal, but I did get it from an interview with Oliver Postgate on the radio. The line was "Oh damn it, the bloody thing's stuck again", which the BBC forced them to change even though it was just done with whistles. The whistles were exactly the same, they just changed the words in the "script".

Re: Swear like Troopers

Re: Swear like Troopers

May be an urban myth (I do so hope not) but when they were trying to sell it to a German(?) TV channel they offered to re-do the soundtrack but the visiting execs refused the offer as they could understand what the Clangers were 'saying'

Re: Licence

Re: Licence

@Pond

While what you say is correct regarding the noun and verb versions of the word, I believe in this context it was intended to be licence fee - it being the fee of the licence rather than the licensing of the fee?

The new Clangers will explore themes including "community and caring for the planet"

Oliver Postgate

What environment?

They live on a lifeless grey husk with barely an atmosphere to speak off and an escape velocity so low clangers routinely managed to float off and needed rescue. The only other non-robotic complex life form left is a dragon-like creature that has to dig deep beneath the surface to survive on geothermal heat and microorganism-rich subterranian lakes, making only occasional trips to the surface to trade with the surface-dwellers. Their world is about as much of a planet as Pluto.

Re: What environment?

It is so a planet

And I think they always were ecologically concerned, precisely because their little world is ecologically fragile. Anything that lands on them from space could be an environmental disaster, including space probes.